“When I was six years old”

     When I was six years old, eight years old, my grandmother decreed a garment of hare, which would ward off all evil. And, so, she made a coat of hare fur and took in the seams, and, inside, tucked pencils and books.
     At daybreak, before, in the night, I went to school, dressed like that, and on all fours, among the flickering grasses and the dahlias. Hundreds of meters; at times, I rested and made coffee in a small jar, and I carried on.
     But, once, the ferocious children found me.
     They taunted: There, goes Rosa the hare! There goes the hare, the hare! There goes the hare! And they surrounded me.
     The stars offered their branches, so I could climb up and flee with them.
     But the dawn began to color the land.
     And the dawn witnessed the sacrifice in the thicket.
 

Translated from the Spanish
Notes:

Read the Spanish-language original, “Cuando tenía seis años,” and the translator’s note by Sarah María Medina.

Source: Poetry (March 2024)